The Thing

In 1982, the Norwegian Dr. Sander Halvorson (Ulrich Thomsen) invites the paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) to join his team in his research in the Artic. On the arrival, she learns that they have discovered a spacecraft deep below in the ice. They find a frozen alien life form nearby and they bring to their facility for research. Out of the blue, the alien revives and attack the scientists, contaminating them and assuming the shape of his victim. Kate finds means to identify the creature, but maybe it is too late to save the team members.

In 1982, the master John Carpenter remade the 1951 "The Thing from Another World" ans his movie has become a masterpiece. The story of a shape-shifting alien that can assume any human form is tense, supported by a claustrophobic and depressing scenario, paranoid characters with Kurt Russell in the top of his successful career, haunting music score by Ennio Morricone and John Carpenter's top-notch direction.

This remake disguised in prequel is not totally bad, but follows the format of the present Hollywood movies, supported by special effects but without the atmosphere and the psychological horror of the 1982 movie. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "O Enigma do Outro Mundo" ("The Enigma of Another World")

Initially I had thought this to be yet another of the countless Hollywood remakes, and I was thrilled to find out that it was not so. Being a prequel, this movie definitely had something to live up to, as Carpenter's original version is nothing short of a masterpiece.

This 2011 prequel actually did a good job, and I think it was a good addition to Carpenter's work.

What impressed me was the creature effects. The effects team really had managed to put together something unique here. And there was really a sense of something not-of-this-world about the grotesque shapes and abnormalities the creature assumed. And best of all was that the effects and make-up all looked so life-like and real.

The acting in the movie was good, and I think it was a really great touch that they had put together a mix of American, Danish and Norwegian actors/actresses. And the best part was that people actually did speak Danish and Norwegian, and not just English with a Scandinavian imitated accent, as you tend to see in American movies. So thumbs up on this detail.

As in the original Carpenter movie, they really had caught the feeling of isolation and paranoia in this 2011 movie as well. However, it was a shame that there really wasn't anything new or innovating to be told from the story here. It was a bit like they were just making soup off the broth Carpenter already used back in the day.

However, all in all, "The Thing" (2011) actually did entertain me thoroughly and I think it was a good enough prequel in its own way. Just don't expect something overly new here.

It's hard for anything to compare to John Carpenter's The Thing. It's one of the greatest horror films ever made, some would argue *the* best. Thankfully, they didn't go the remake route here and instead opted for a prequel that depicted the events that happened in the Norwegian camp prior to the '82 version. In that regard, this movie does an impressive job at tying some knots like showing how the two-faced thing came to be, as well as the origin of the dog from the start of Carpenter's Thing. Sadly, that's where most of the praise ends.

The Thing suffers from what plagues many horror movies these days - underwritten characters and overwhelming CGI. One of the scariest things of Carpenter's version is the practical effects of the "thing". They were horrifying. Here, all subtlety is thrown out the window in favor of huge CGI monsters. It's effectively used in a couple scenes, but the monsters lose their scariness after a while and it just becomes gratuitous. The characters themselves are paper thin. What helped make the '82 version so fantastic is that we got to know the characters, their quirks, their personalities, and we were able to empathize with their situations. In this movie, half of the characters are interchangeable. I didn't even know most of their names. And worse yet, I didn't care about any of them. There's one particular scene that calls back to Carpenter's infamous blood test scene where I realized that most of these people are really dumb and I don't care if any of them die. That's not good in a horror movie. By that point it was just a waiting game for them to get picked off one by one.

The lead performances are strong. For the material they were given, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Joel Edgerton do a fine job. But that simply isn't enough to carry a movie like this. The Thing is supposed to be scary, and for the most part, it isn't. That's a failure by horror standards. There's some face-value entertainment to be had here, but if you're looking for a substantial prequel to Carpenter's masterpiece, you'll be sorely disappointed.

Now now children, some people will have different opinions than you and just because it's different, doesn't make it wrong. Having read the first couple of pages of reviews here and having just seen the film only quarter of an hour ago, I felt compelled to write something about this prequel to the 1982 'The Thing'.

It's fair to say that opinion is divided on the merits of this offering, but it's also fair to say that most opinions that lambast this film are from die-hard Carpenter fans who are woefully disappointed by what they have seen, and fair play to them. No, it's not like the original movie. Go figure. It's nearly thirty years later. If you want to see the same film, go and rent it (and then watch it) twice.

Having seen the original movie maybe three or four times in the past thirty years (I was fourteen when I will have first seen it in 1983) I was quite pleasantly surprised by the end of this prequel. True, it lacks some of the tension of the original and the acting from most, if not all, was below par. I remember the wonder of the special effects taking my breath away in the early eighties. This effort failed to bring me those same kind of delightful terrors. However, this is not due to the realism or effort on the part of the film-makers.

This is purely down to my experience of horror movies throughout the past thirty years. My expectations at 42 are not the same as that 14 year old boy and I am a grisled and wisened old movie cynic these days as opposed to a wide-eyed horror newbie. I think I watched this around the same time as my pirate VHS copies of The Evil Dead and Poltergeist.

In short, this wasn't half bad. It was faithful enough the original film for my liking, though having only seen it a few times, I am far from an authority on the subject matter. Continuity sputtered from time to time and there were slightly too many plot lines left dangling for comfort, but altogether, this was an enjoyable hour and a half. Yes, it's true that you didn't feel for the characters as much as say MacReady (or whatever Russell's name was) in the first film and some of the blame for this should fall squarely on the writers. After all, bad though the acting may have been, they can only read what's on the page in front of them.

Don't be put off by the comments you read here that tell you this is nothing more than an awful pile of monkey doings, because that is judging it too harshly. It's never going to be the classic that Carpenter's film ended up being, but given the last decade of truly terrible remakes we have been forced to sit through, horror-wise, this is almost a breath of fresh air. Remember what decade you're in be thankful that whilst this is not a classic, it is better than much of what we've seen recently.

First off, I will have to make a disclaimer: I love the 1982 John Carpenter's "The Thing". That being said, this review will try to be fair. Hopefully.

First off, "The Thing" is a prequel. I always have a fascination of prequels because they have a unique approach to writing in that the events must lead up logically to a movie already made rather than taking the idea of the first movie and going in different directions with it. This creates a lot of confinement and there have been some really cool prequels that, even in this confinement, still feel fresh and take whatever franchise into a new direction (case in point, From Dusk Til Dawn 3). So already, this movie has both a reputation to live up to (the 1982 movie is very highly regarded by John Carpenter fans, horror fans and even fans of good drama and story telling) and adding in the fact that the writers must somehow lead up to the original movie is a tough task to undertake. Overall, it was a valiant effort...but missed the mark.

The entire concept of the monster of this movie is that it dissolves any sort of trust between people. When these people are in a confined location like Antarctica, it becomes a boiler room situation with wills being tested, fears being escalated and the overall sense of any safety even with someone you've known for a while completely in chaos. I feel that this Thing movie missed that sense of despair, confinement and overall breakdown of the relationships between colleagues and comrades and even enemies when a shape shifting impostor is thrown into the mix. This is made blatantly evident when over half the characters don't seem worthy of care by the audience. Most have no personality to connect to, and the sheer number of characters just makes it worse to get to know these people. So when they start dropping like flies, one really doesn't care a whole lot.

And really, that's the fundamental flaw with the movie and why the whole thing feels forced. The pacing wasn't as deliberately slow, the whodunnit aspect didn't feel properly in place, and finally...and again, this criticism is as a fan of the original movie...why on earth did the thing not try to hide more than it did? At one point, it seemed like the movie shifted gears into a simple monster movie with *insert beastly monster* just running around killing which was completely uncharacteristic of the original movie where the thing, even when found out, would try to make an escape to hide again...

So in all, as a standalone movie, it wasn't bad at all. It was a nice return to gory disgusting things that go bump in the dark. But as a prequel, it missed the mark I think the film makers were trying to hit. John Carpenter laid out a very specific and deliberate tone to the original movie that this one just couldn't seem to figure out how to replicate...no blood test needed to find this impostor.